Professor Sir Malcolm Evans, Deputy Director of the Human Rights Implementation Centre, University of Bristol Law School, has been re-elected as the chair of the United Nations (UN) Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT). The SPT, established in 2007, has a preventive mandate, focused on an innovative, sustained and proactive approach to the prevention of torture and ill treatment. It is a multidisciplinary body of independent experts with 25 members and is the largest of the UN human rights treaty bodies.

Professor Sir Malcolm Evans has been a member of the SPT since 2009 and Chair since February 2011. He has been re-elected by his fellow members to serve for a further two years.  

The SPT derives its mandate from the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture. It employs a number of strategies to lessen the likelihood of persons deprived of their liberty being ill-treated, be it in the criminal justice system, immigration detention, mental health institutions, care homes or elsewhere.  The SPT undertakes field visits to places of deprivation of liberty in the States Parties, of which there are currently 83. The SPT also advises and assists States in the establishment of National Preventive Mechanisms and engages with them in order to help develop their work. The SPT co-operates also with other international, regional and national bodies and agencies engaged in activities related to the prevention of torture.

Professor Evans said: ‘I am both delighted and honoured to have the opportunity of continuing to lead the work of the SPT, which had the most powerful of all mandates with the UN system to tackle torture around the world’.